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I think having one man reviewing every code submission for a kernel is a stupid policy. why don't they have a kernel review team like in freebsd? unless linus insists that he is the author of the kernel.

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I think having one man reviewing every code submission for a kernel is a stupid policy. why don't they have a kernel review team like in freebsd? unless linus insists that he is the author of the kernel.

You should do a bit of research before trying to criticize something and throw in your two cents.

Do you really think Linus is reviewing millions of lines of code by himself? He just has the final say when it comes to merging branches that have already gone through the hierarchy of the review/development process.

Each kernel component has a lieutenant maintaining it, and then responsibility is delegated down from there. They're the ones who send in pull requests to Linus.

He has a very high-level view of the development, and his decisions are mostly based on whether a branch has become stable enough to be merged in the current window, or if it will have to wait another cycle (or more).

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still, he still has to "review the reviews". i don't understand the wisdom behind that.

Somewhere along the line, there has to be a final answer given as to whether something is in or out. Punting that to a committee doesn't solve the apparent problem; the people on the committee will still probably be unfamiliar with the details and may do no better than a single person who makes the final decision.

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Somewhere along the line, there has to be a final answer given as to whether something is in or out. Punting that to a committee doesn't solve the apparent problem; the people on the committee will still probably be unfamiliar with the details and may do no better than a single person who makes the final decision.

I see one more reason why the process is delegated to a single person. Humans are built such that they need a single leader to perform most efficiently. Multiple leaders introduce the risk of disagreements which slow down any process. There must be one person who has the final say on a given matter. Of course this is risky too, as despothies have showed in the history. That's what advisors are for. But again - there must be single driver for the best efficiency. I could write some more about it. Maybe even a full-blow essay. Unfortunately I am not a good writer, so I will let it be in my mind.

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I see one more reason why the process is delegated to a single person. Humans are built such that they need a single leader to perform most efficiently. Multiple leaders introduce the risk of disagreements which slow down any process. There must be one person who has the final say on a given matter. Of course this is risky too, as despothies have showed in the history. That's what advisors are for. But again - there must be single driver for the best efficiency. I could write some more about it. Maybe even a full-blow essay. Unfortunately I am not a good writer, so I will let it be in my mind.

But multiple people are less likely to make rash mistakes. You get more information and experience informing the decision. A stalement about a design decision wouldn't be the end of the world, if someone needed a feature right now, they could fork the kernel.

In this case I think it's just a historical accident that you have one guy making the final cut because that's what he's done before, and he's done a decent job at it.